The invention generally relates to a medical device and in particular, to a medical device comprising a collagenous biomaterial.
A naturally occurring biomaterial for medical implantation is more desirable that a synthetic implant. Synthetic implants tend to cause adverse reactions in a patient, including thrombosis, immune responses, and potentially restenosis in vascular applications. Therefore, a medical implant that reduces or eliminates these problems is a technical advance.
Collagenous biomaterials are known to be used in medical applications as medical devices. As a naturally occurring biomaterial, the implant produces less complications than a synthetic implant. Collagen is used as an abundant source of protein, and is most notably derived from bovine skin. Collagen forms a matrix that is useable as an implant. However, as a biomaterial, it does not have good manipulation properties, unless treated in other ways. In addition, one problem with these material is that collagen biomaterials also carry with them antigens which cause an immune response in the patient. Therefore, a product that behaves like collagen in vivo yet is highly manipulative and elicits less to no negative immune response is a technical achievement.
The foregoing problems are solved and a technical advance is achieved with the present invention. A new biomaterial comprising the submucosa of a tissue was discovered to have greater benefit than using collagen. For example, the submucosa is shown to exhibit more remodeling, regrowth, and regeneration of tissue upon implant. It has been shown that submucosal tissue is absorbed by the patient and thus the patient does not require post-implantation procedures to remove the implant. The submucosal tissue has been shown to elicit favorable immune response that leads to an accommodation of the submucosal implant versus a rejection based response. Therefore, to further improve the submucosal tissue""s industrial utility, the applicants have discovered that this utility can be achieved by improving the submucosa""s purity and forming the submucosal tissue into various forms. Such forms, include, but are not limited to sheets, sponges, fluidized, etc. The present invention relates to a purified form of submucosal tissue that is treated in such a manner as to confer some shape memory and shape configuration to the implant. However, the submucosal tissues are not limited to implants and can be formed to be used in topical applications as well, such as wound dressings or wound plugs.
In addition, the problem of maintaining the sterility of the medical device is solved by including the medical device in a pouch or plurality of pouches. The pouches can be at least one of a gas permeable, sealed, hermetically sealed, sterile UV protected, and multiple pouched. In addition, the foregoing problems are solved by including processes of making the medical device.